Subrahmanyam 1992 The Mughal State Structure or Process

The Mughal state—Structure or
Reflections on recent western
process?
historiography
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Delhi School of Economics
&dquo;The empire of the Great Mogol comprehends several nations, over

which he is not absolute master. Most of them still retain their own
peculiar chiefs or sovereigns, who obey the Mogol or pay him tribute
only by compulsion. In many instances this tribute is of trifling amount;
in others none is paid; and I shall adduce instances of nations which,
instead of paying, receive tribute&dquo;.
Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668), p. 205.
-
&dquo;What, then, were the new elements of political chemistry out of which
Akbar compounded such a large, stable, long-lasting politicf!! structure?
At the risk of oversimplification, I would say that these were an
extreme systematization of administration, a new theoretical basis for
.sovereignty, and a balanced and stable composition of the ruling class&dquo;.
M. Athar Ali, &dquo;Towards an interpretation of the Mughal Empire&dquo;,
-
p. 40.
Introduction
Much has been written in the past three decades about the Mughal state,
which dominates the study of medieval Indian history, even though its
career extends in one fashion or the other as late as the middle of the
nineteenth century. The first volume of The Cambridge Economic History
of India (1982) is largely devoted to the Mughals; the New Cambridge
History of India, a set of volumes still in progress, has an entire section
(Section I) devoted to The Mughals and their Contemporaries, includingironically enough-a volume on the Vijayanagara state, which was founded
some two hundred years before Babur set foot in Hindustan.
Cf.
Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of
Cambridge, 1982; the volume on the general history of the Mughals in the New
Cambridge History of India is to be by J.F. Richards (provisional title: The Mughal Empire
),
Acknowledgements: The author acknowledges with gratitude the help of Muzaffar Alam and
Nalini Delvoye, and comments hy Ramachandra Guha. All views expressed here are
India, Vol. I,
those of the author alone.
Downloaded from ier.sagepub.com at ENS-Bibliotheque Jourdan on June 23, 2015
292
The greater part of these writings have, almost inevitably, been produced in south Asia, and at least some of them have the sort of coherence
that one would attribute to a school. In contrast, with the exception of
John F. Richardss Mughal Administration in Golconda. 1687-1724
(Oxford 1975), the 1960s and 1970s saw no major work on the economic
and political history of Mughal India produced in Europe or North
America. Indeed, at the level of monographic literature, scholars based in
these continents have remained remarkably wary of venturing any generalisations on the high Mughal period-preferring instead to view the
Mughals from the safe vantage-point of the late eighteenth or nineteenth
centuries, and very largely on the basis of the documentation provided by
the English East India Company. Writings such as those of Andrd Wink,
sometimes misrepresented as making a basic contribution to Mughal studies
through the use of master concepts (in the instance, fitna), in fact are
essentially treatments of regional states in the eighteenth century, based
almost exclusively on materials pertaining to this period.
This is in marked contrast to the situation in respect of cultural history,
where much interesting work continues to emerge, on subjects like Mughal
architecture and painting, from the western universities. However, these
writings remain imperfectly integrated into the larger political, social and
and has not yet appeared. For a fuller examination of the historiography, and an attempt at
reformulating the problems of Mughal state-building, see Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, State-building in South Asia and the Mughals, 1500-1750, in Tosun Aricanli,
Ashraf Ghani and David Ludden, eds., The Political Economy of the Ottoman, Safavid and
Mughal Empires, New York, forthcoming.
2
André Wink, Land and sovereignty in India: Agrarian society and politics under the
eighteenth-century Maratha Svarajya, Cambridge, 1986; for views of this book as a basic
reformulation on the Mughals in even the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Robert
E. Frykenberg, Indias Past seen "From Below" , Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, Vol. XVII, (3), 1989, pp. 433-37; also David Washbrook, South Asia, The World
System, and World Capitalism, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XLIX, (3), 1990,
pp. 479-508, especially p. 491.
Finally, see Peter Hardy, The authority of Muslim kings in mediaeval South Asia, in
Marc Gaborieau, ed., Islam et société en Asie du Sud, Collection Purus&amacr;rtha No. 9, Paris,
1986, pp. 37-55. Hardy concludes his discussion in the 1750s. and writes, acknowledging
a great debt to Winks work: At that point, when all conflict, all politics had been
submerged in the stable stillness of a motionless immensity of all-embracing but impotent
universal overlordship, Mughal authority had become most truly Indian (p. 51). In brief
then, Winks theories have their greatest appeal to those who believe in the motionless
immensity of the basic motors of state formation in pre-colonial India!
3
For contributions to the study of Mughal architecture, Wayne E. Begley and Z.A. Desai,
Taj Mahal: The illumined tomb, Cambridge, Mass. , 1989;Wayne E. Begley, The myth of the
Taj Mahal and a new theory of its symbolic meaning, The Art Bulletin, No. 61, March 1979,
pp. 7-37; Ebba Koch, Shahjahan and Orpheus, Graz, 1988. More recently, there is a useful
summing up of recent developments in this field by Ebba Koch, Mughal Architecture: An
outline of its history and development, Munich, 1991. On art-history, see Milo C. Beach, The
Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India. 1600-1660, Williamstown, Mass., 1978; Stuart Cary
Welch, Imperial Mughal Painting, London, 1978; Milo C. Beach, The Imperial image: Paintings
for the Mughal court, Washington, 1981; Annemarie Schimmel and Stuart Cary Welch,
293
period, and a work of synthesis which takes

developments is as yet a distant prospect. At
art-history and architectural history accept in a
relatively unquestioning manner the basic postulates on the nature and
history of the Mughal state set out for them by political and social historians,
on the basis of chronicles and documents; political and social historians, for
their part, seem to have disdain for art-history and allied disciplines.
Some recent monographs (in particular two by Douglas Streusand and
Stephen Blake) seem to mark a departure from the earlier trend, in which
south Asia-based scholars dominated the study of the political, economic
and social history of the Mughal empire.&dquo; The present article is partly
concerned with locating these new writings in the ongoing debate on the
Mughal state and the society it ruled over, while at the same time showing
where such work stands in a larger comparative perspective, taking west
Asia in particular into account. This is all the more necessary since the
authors of these writings seem to claim for themselves a status that goes
beyond the narrow confines of the Mughal historiography, and make
frequent reference to the Ottoman and Safavid states.
economic history of the

account of these varied
present, most writers on
The received wisdom

Let
begin though by sketching very broadly the received wisdom and the
current state of the historiography on the Mughals. It is often stated that
modem studies of the Mughals are dominated by the Aligarh school, a
statement that might itself be open to controversy. Is there an Aligarh
school in medieval Indian history? If so, what are the main propositions it
has put forward? A consideration of Medieval ndia-A Miscellany, an
occasional publication from the Centre for Advanced Study, Department
of History, Aligarh Muslim University, may leave the reader in doubt.
The Miscellany is precisely that, an eclectic collection of points of view; if
us
Anvaris Divan: A pocket book for Akbar, New York, 1983; Michael Brand and Glenn
D. Lowry, Akbars India: Art from the Mughal City of Victory, New York, 1985. For a rare
to use art-history for the furtherance of political history, see Som Prakash Verma,
Elements of historicity in the portraits of the Mughal school, The Indian Historical Review,
Vol. IX, (1/2), 1982-83, pp. 63-73. Milo C. Beach will author a volume on Mughal art-history
for the New Cambridge History of India, with the counterpart volume for architecture being
by Catherine Asher.
4
Douglas E. Streusand, The Formation of the Mughal Empire, Delhi, 1989; Stephen
P. Blake, Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal India 1639-1739, Cambridge, 1991.
5
Medieval India—A Miscellany, 4 Volumes, Bombay, 1969-1977; Volumes V and VI are
forthcoming. For an early reference to the Aligarh school see Peter Hardy, Commentary
and Critique, in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXXV, (2), 1976, pp. 257-63. The use
has now gained some currency; thus see C. Srinivasa Reddy, Approaches to the Mughal
state, Social Scientist, Vol. XIX, (10/11). 1991, pp. 90-96. Perhaps more representative of
the Aligarh school than Medieval India—A Miscellany is a set of three volumes in Hindi,
attempt
294
dominates these essays, it is a basic reliance on Persian source

even here there are some exceptions. And reliance on
sources in a particular language is scarcely enough to define a school.
The Aligarh school may then partially be a misnomer (just like other
similar labels, such as the so-called Cambridge school of Indian history).
But what is normally meant when the term is used is something quite
precise, denoting an adherence to a particular set of propositions in relation to the Mughal state and its interaction with the society of the time.
These propositions cannot be associated with all those who have contributed to the Miscellany or who have been associated with Aligarh;
rather, the key writings are those of Irfan Habib, Athar Ali, Noman
Ahmad Siddiqi, Iqtidar Alam Khan, Shireen Moosvi, and--despite his
lack of formal attachment to Aligarh-Tapan Raychaudhuri. The writings
of K.A. Nizami or S.A.A. Rizvi cannot be seen as belonging to the same
approach as the above writers, nor can those of S. Nurul Hasan. In the
case of Satish Chandra, we must distinguish between his earlier writings
(which are of a piece with the views of Habib, Athar Ali et al.), and more
recent musings by him on the eighteenth century.6
Having made this clear, let us examine the core propositions of the socalled Aligarh school. They, in my understanding, are as follows.
one
thing
material, although
1)
On
chronology: The main focus is on the period from Akbar to

Aurangzeb, which is to say 1556 to 1707. This is the period dealt with
for example in the major text produced by the school; Irfan Habibs
The Agrarian System of Mughal India [1556-1707} (Bombay, 1963).
Even within this period, the main focus is on the reigns of Akbar and
Aurangzeb themselves. This also means giving overwhelming importance
to
certain texts, of which the most favoured status is extended to the
Ain-i Akbari, of Abul Fazl, produced in the reign of Akbar. It is

argued moreover that the key Mughal institutions were put in place by
Akbar, and remained there under Jahangir and Shahjahan, only to
come
under
challenge during
the
reign
of
Aurangzeb.
We note that
Madhyak&amacr;l&imacr;n Bh&amacr;rat, ed., Irfan Habib, New Delhi, Rajkamal Publications, 1981-1990. These
volumes contain selected translations from English of articles and book-reviews, both from
the Miscellany and other sources; they exclude the writings of K.A. Nizami, but include those
of Ashin Das Gupta (whose views on trade and its role in an understanding of the Mughal
state, coincide closely with those of the Aligarh school).
6
Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal court, 1707-1740, Aligarh, 1959;
compare this with Chandra, The Eighteenth Century in India: Its Economy and the Role of the
Marathas, the Jats, the Sikhs and the Afghans, Calcutta, 1986. For a sample of the other main
writings, see Irfan Habib, Potentialities of capitalistic development in the economy of
Mughal India, The Journal of Economic History, Volume XXIX, (1), 1969; M. Athar Ali,
The Mughal nobility under Aurangzeb, Bombay, 1966; and Noman Ahmad Siddiqi, Land
Revenue Administration under the Mughals, 1700-1750, Bombay, 1970.
295
both the
early period of Mughal rule (including both Baburs and

Humayuns reigns), and the post-Aurangzeb era, are given short shrift.
2) The nature of power: The empire in the years under examination is
portrayed as a highly centralised and bureaucratised absolutism. Such
however was apparently not the case under Babur and Humayun, nor
under Aurangzebs successors. Manifestations of this precocious
centralisation are in the Mughal revenue-system, mansabdtirf, the
coinage system, and the high degree of control exercised over society in
general, on which more below.
3) Extractive character: The Mughal state is thought to have had a massive
impact on producers, extracting their surplus almost wholly. In
Raychaudhuris portrayal in The Cambridge Economic History of India,
the Mughal state was an insatiable Leviathan (with)
unlimited
appetite for resources, which had the peasantry reduced to bare sub...
sistence.&dquo;K
4) Spendthrift elite: This
extractive character implied in turn massive

in the hands of the elite. However, the
surplus extracted, it is argued, was used unproductively for conspicuous
consumption, including of imports. One of the reasons why technology
remained static was this elite attitude, which was lacking in scientific
curiosity and technological application.
Irrelevance of ideology: Ideology, usually read as religion, may be
seen as largely irrelevant for purposes of historical analysis. The main
contradictions and tensions are to be viewed as structural, and flow
from the clash of interests rather than ideological perspectives. Even the
reasons for the curious elite ideology mentioned above (proposition 4)
are not investigated, but treated as given. Part of the reason for this
appears to be the need to use certain selected texts quite literally, rather
than consider the possibility that they might be ideologically motivated.
The notion of the normative text thus does not feature in these
writings for the most part. &dquo;
concentration of
5)
resources
7
For the characteristic neglect
the periods of Babur and Humayun, see Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, eds.,
Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. I, passim;
M. Athar Ali, Towards an interpretation of the Mughal empire, Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1978, No. 1, pp. 38-49. In contrast see Mohibbul Hasan,
Babur: Founder of the Mughal Empire in India, New Delhi, 1985, pp. 32-78; and some
examples among the earlier writings of Iqtidar Alam Khan, such as his Mirza Kamran, a
biographical study, Bombay, 1964.
Tapan Raychaudhuri, The State and the Economy: The Mughal empire, in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, Volume I, p. 173.
9
Irfan Habib, The Technology and Economy of Mughal India, The Indian Economic and
Social History Review, Vol. XVII, (1), 1980, pp. 1-34; M. Athar Ali, The Passing of Empire:
The Mughal case, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. IX, (3), 1975, pp. 385-96.
10
Cf. Shireen Moosvi, The economy of the Mughal empire c. 1595: A statistical study,
Delhi, 1987. It is evidently no coincidence that this monograph, which rests heavily on the
&Amacr;in-i Akbar&imacr;, never discusses who Abul Fazl was, or for what ends the text was written.
Significantly, most reviewers of the book have also passed over the issue in silence.
of
The
296
6) Sterility of trade: This proposition appears to flow largely from (4).

Imports are seen as largely required to service elite consumption. Since
this position bears a close resemblance to the one espoused by eighteenthcentury physiocratic literature, it is natural that the Aligarh school
opposes its writings to those of bullionist historians, who it portrays as
praising trade because it brought precious metals into the economy.&dquo;
However, even for the Aligarh school trade may not be wholly irrelevant
in one specific sense. This is in terms of the potentially destabilising
effects of the bullion inflow through inflation in the seventeenth century,
the so-called Price Revolution.
7) Eighteenth-century decline: This proposition has, more than any other,

attracted attention, although not even all of the Aligarh school (as we
have defined it) have the same opinion on the question. Tapan Raychaudhuri, for example, apparently does not subscribe to the view of
a decline in the economy in the eighteenth century, in his contributions to the two volumes of the Cambridge Economic History of
India. 11 Most fervently attached to the proposition are Athar Ali and
Irfan Habib, with the latter having first articulated his position in the
closing chapter of his Agrarian System. He argued there that the
jagirdari system, whose very nature promoted short-term exploitation
of the peasantry, combined with other factors such as inflation to
provoke a crisis, manifested in widespread peasant rebellions against
the Mughal state. This crisis came to a head already in the last years of
Aurangzebs reign, and continued through much of the eighteenth
century, leading to the generalised subversion of peasant agriculture.
The eighteenth century was in his view a period when the gates were
opened to reckless rapine, anarchy and foreign conquest.&dquo;
&dquo;
-
The formation of the
Mughal
state
Having set out, at some length, the received wisdom on a variety of

issues concerning the study of the Mughal state, let us consider how
recent western writings part company with it. A major issue is clearly
chronology, or proposition no. 1, as we have set it out above. It is
certainly worth considering that the pre-Akbar period may have had a
greater significance than usually given to it. It. could be argued, for
"
Cf. Shireen Moosvi, The silver influx, money supply, prices and revenue-extraction in
India, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. XXX, (1),
1987, pp. 47-94; also Moosvi, The economy of the Mughal empire, pp. 390-91.
12
Raychaudhuri, The State and the Economy. pp. .178, 192-93. Also his The mideighteenth century background, in Dharma Kumar. ed., The Cambridge Economic History
of India, Vol. II. Cambridge, 1983.
"
Habib, Agrarian System, pp. 317-51. especially p. 351. Also see, more recently, Zahir
Uddin Malik, Core and Periphery: A contribution to the debate on eighteenth century
India, Sociål Scientist, Vol. XVIII, (11/12), 1990.
Mughal
/297
the lead of Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui and more recently

Mohibbul Hasan, that the period of Lodi rule, running into the reign of
Babur, already showed signs of a new dynamic where the state-building
process was concerned.&dquo; In the case ot Douglas Streusand, the title of his
book itself gives a clue to his views on the matter. For him the formation
of the Mughal empire took place under Akbar, and the earlier period can
be dealt with quite summarily (Babur and Humayun merit only a few
paragraphs, pp. 36-37). Again, for Stephen Blake, the pre-Shahjahanabad
history of Delhi (including Humayuns use of the centre for his court) can
equally be given short shrift, and the significance of the fact that the site
was repeatedly used, with intervals, is thus lost sight of. In so doing, both
writers implicitly suggest that the real history of the Mughal state began
with Akbar.
Why were the reigns of Babur and Humayun, as indeed of the Afghan
Sher Shah (who though not Mughal, dynastically speaking, does form a
part of the epoch considered to be Mughal in north Indian history) so
unimportant? As articulated by Iqtidar Alam Khan in a brief, but rather
well-known, article, the principal reason for this lay in the realm of state
structure and the internal balance of power. He argued, against an earlier
interpretation by R.P. Tripathi, that just as the Afghan states in northern
India had contained an inbuilt tendency to fragmentation, so too the
Timurid polity discouraged centralisation on account of its Mongol characteristics. These characteristics manifested themselves above all in terms
of the relations between the Timurid royalty and the nobility, which was
governed by customary laws derived from Chinggis Khan (yasa-yi Chingezi
or tra-yi Chingezil. According to these traditions, it is argued, sovereignty
was a shared attribute of the lineage, rather than exclusively held by a
single ruler. Succession therefore led inevitably to appanage formation,
which thus prevented the emergence of a strong ruler. Equally, the absence of
a substantive bureaucratic tradition among the Timurids is also seen as
setting sharp limits to the possibilities of centralisation. This, then, is the
background as to why Humayun faced challenges from his nobility and
siblings (especially Mirza Kamran) in 1538-41 and 1545-53. In turn, only
Akbar, rejecting Mongol traditions and embracing more the traditions and
practice evolved under Turkish rulers of the thirteenth and fourteenth
century, managed the transformation of the Mughal Empire into a highly
example, following
sophisticated despotism. 15
14
Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui. Some Aspects of Afghan Despotism in India, Aligarh, 1969;
Mohibbul Hasan, Babur, pp. 158-60. A particularly significant, and neglected, period, is of
the rule of Sikandar Shah Lodi (1489-1517). which seems to have had significant continuities
with the reforms carried out under Sher Shah Sur (1538-45).
"
Iqtidar Alam Khan, The Turko-Mongol Theory of Kingship, in Medieval India: A
Miscellany, Vol. II, Bombay, 1972. pp. 8-18; the argument is presented in a weaker form in
I.A. Khan. The political biography of a Mughal noble Munim Khan Khan-i Khanan,
298/
Such an argument, which is accepted in substance (with some minor

modifications) by Streusand, could in fact be reconsidered from various
perspectives. First, even though Timurs empire fragmented after his
death, there now appears to be a consensus that he did manage a significant transition from the relatively loose structure of the Chaghatay
,
Khanate to a far more centralised and autocratic structure. This he did

because in part he claimed to combine Chinggis Khanid tradition with
divine sanction; thus, he declared as early as 1361 that what underpinned
his rule was the Celestial Decree and Chinggis Khanid law (yarli~h-i
dsamdni wa tra-yi Chingzkhn), and the former could presumably be
used to overrule the latter at times.6 Second, as Streusand too points out,
the bureaucratic tradition was by no means absent among Timur and the
Timurids, who made extensive use of bureaucrats steeped in Persian culture
(including, not least of all, their chroniclers).&dquo; But most serious of all is the
neglect of a major struggle that was fought out between the 1560s and the
mid-1580s, which could be used to test this theory of a significant transition
between Humayun and Akbar. Here, I refer to Akbars relations with his
half-brother Mirza Muhammad Hakim (1554-85), which receive but cursory
attention from Streusand, as they have from earlier writers.
Mirza Hakim was born relatively late in Humayuns life, his mother
being Mah Chuchak Begam. Through most of his life, he remained associated with a particular region of what had been Humayuns domain,
namely the area around Kabul. This fact itself is not devoid of significance;
Mirza Kamran had operated in much the same area, and as such it remained
poorly incorporated into Mughal territories. Now, unfortunately, we have
few sources that portray his struggle with Akbar from his perspective.
From the viewpoint of Akbars court, he was an embarrassment that had to
be explained away or glossed over. On two occasions, once in the late
1560s and again in the early 1580s, the latter strategy was not possible:
these were moments when he came to be allied with rebels within Akbars
domains, who had the khu.1ba read in Mirza Hakims name in the course of
1497-1575, New Delhi, 1973, Introduction. Also
see his The Nobility under Akbar and the

Development of his Religious Policy, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and
Ireland, 1968, pp. 29-36. For the earlier argument, R.P. Tripathi, Some aspects of Muslim
administration, 2nd edition, Allahabad, 1959.

16
The phrase is quoted in Jean Aubin, Comment Tamerlan prenait les villes. Studia
-i
&imacr;kh
Islamica, Vol. XIX, 1963, pp. 83-122, p. 87, from Natanzis Munta
&amacr;b al-Taw&amacr;r
kh
Muini. For a recent reconsideration of state-building under Timur, see Beatrice Forbes
Manz, The rise and rule of Tamerlane, Cambridge, 1989.
17
Streusand, Formation, pp. 6-8, citing Khan, Munim Khan, pp. xi-xvi. Compare Streusand,
pp. 29-37, where he points out (implicitly against Iqtidar Alam Khan) that Timur and the
Timurids did indeed make use of a bureaucracy; however, he then goes on to argue that a
major discontinuity nevertheless existed between Akbar and his predecessors, because he was
the first to deny the Timurid doctrine of collective sovereignty, which usually inevitably led
to the fragmentation of
empires into small, struggling principalities (p. 30).
...
299
rebellions. On both occasions, Akbar had to move against him, but although
defeated, he was never set aside. Implicitly, then, Mirza Hakims hereditary right to rule over Kabul was not challenged, and he appears to have
had a relatively free hand in organising revenue-assignments in the region,
as well as in conducting negotiations with the Abulkhairi Uzbek state of
Mavarannahr, with the Safavids (who treated him as a sovereign ruler) and
with another Timurid potentate, Mirza Sulaiman. The latter, also a neglected figure of the same epoch, was the ruler of Badakhshan, as well as
Mirza Hakims father-in-law; he eventually lost his territories to the
Uzbeks and become a mansabdar with the rank of 5,000 under Akbar,
dying in Lahore in 1589.11
Now, even though Akbars chroniclers (and especially Abul Fazl) go to
some lengths to portray Mirza Hakim as an unruly subordinate of Akbar, it
is evident that his position was more complex. First, we may note that he is
never treated, even retrospectively, as a Mughal amir; his biography is thus
absent from Shahnawaz Khans Maasir ul-Umard, unlike that of Mirza
Sulaiman.&dquo; There is also no clear evidence that he ever held a manvab; on
the contrary, several prominent manvabdars are described as men who had
come over to Akbars service after his half-brothers death. In more senses
than one, therefore, Mirza Hakim represented an alternative powercentre, and an alternative focus of authority and patronage to Akbar; and
even if the challenge from him did not wholly mature, we cannot dismiss it
out of hand. The very fact that Abul Fazl himself reports a discussion in
Akbars court in the early 1580s. of a proposal to assassinate Mirza Hakim,
and thus end the threat from him once and for all, is highly suggestive.&dquo; It
is therefore rather surprising that while devoting some attention to the
abortive challenge posed to Akbar by the other Mirzas (Timurid descendants, and thus distant cousins of Akbar, usually of Badakhshani origin,
discussed on pp. 102-6), Streusand wholly ignores the significance of
Mirza Hakims challenge. In particular, given his claims to posing Mughal
history in a wider context, it would have been of interest to examine more
closely the perception of Akbar in western and central Asia vis-a-vis his
brother, through an examination of such texts as the celebrated Uzbek
chronicle of Tanish al-Bukhari, Abdullah Nma (or Sharaf Ninw-yi Shhl),
as well as the diplomatic correspondence with the Safavids.1
18
Cf. The Akbar Nama of Abu-l-Fazl, trans. H. Beveridge, 3 Vols., reprint Delhi, 1989,
III, pp. 211-22, 836-37.
19
Nawwab Samsam-ud-daula Shah Nawaz Khan (and Abdul Hayy), The Maathir-ulUmara, trans. and ed. H. Beveridge and Baini Prashad, Vol. II, Calcutta, 1952. pp. 884-93.
Akbar Nama, trans. Beveridge, Vol. III, p. 523.
20
21
For instance, in at least one letter of the period 1576-77, the Safavid ruler Shah Ismail II
addresses Mirza Hakim as p&amacr;dsh&amacr;h- and masnad nishin
; for a summary of this text (from
manuscript versions inter alia in British Museum. Addn. 7654. fols. 186a-187b, and
Addn. 7688. fol. 128a). see Riazul Islam. ed., A calendar of documents on Indo—Persian
relations (1500-1700), 2 Vols. Karachi/Teheran. 1978-82, Vol. I, letter A. 20, p. 100. Also
Vol.
300
We
might also fruitfully examine the extent to which the succession

struggles that occurred during every major transition between Akbar and
Aurangzeb differed in their essence from the challenges posed to
Humayun by his brothers, or to Akbar by his half-brother. Contrary to
what has sometimes been supposed, both the late 1650s and the period
after Aurangzebs death witnessed proposals to divide up the Mughal
empire into a set of appanages among the princes. Aurangzeb himself
signed an agreement (ahd /M/7M) with his brother Murad Bakhsh, agreeing
to give the latter as his rightful share of the inherited territories (mamdlik-i
mabrsa-yi mauroi), the scibas of Lahore, Kabul, Kashmir, Multan,
Bhakkar, Thatta and the territories bordering on the Sea of Oman, as part
of an united front against Dara Shukoh. Again, after Aurangzebs death,
Bahadur Shah proposed an explicit division of territories to his brother
Azam Shah, ostensibly because Aurangzeb himself had so desired before
his death.22 Now, even if these proposals eventually did not take effect,
such attempts indicate that the idea of appanaging had not died by the late
sixteenth century. This would of course force us to reconsider the extent to
which the model of linear succession had successfully been implanted by
Akbar, and his ideologue Abul Fazl.
The issue of appanaging is, of course, only one dimension of the problem
of centralisation. What were the major institutional novelties, which
permit us to assert that the Mughal state of Akbar, unlike that under his
predecessors, showed an extreme systematisation of administration (as
argued by Athar Ali, for example)? This would require us to consider in
some detail the extent to which the jagir as instituted by Akbar diverged in
reality from the wajh assignment under the Lodi Sultans, or the tuylil as
used by Babur and Humayun. We would also have to re-examine the
significance of the idea of the mamab, which older writers like Moreland
have seen as rooted in the earlier Mongol practice of numerical ranking (an
idea that is currently out of favour).23 In other words, rather than accept as
is another letter, written a decade after Mirza Hakims death (June 1596), by
Akbar to Abdullah Khan Uzbek, in Islam, ed., Calendar, Vol. II, letter Tx. 334, p. 221.
Here Akbar reassures the Uzbek ruler regarding the fate of Mirza Hakims children, whom he
had taken into custody.
22
For the proposal to divide the empire in the 1650s, see Aurangzebs letters of the period,
in Shaikh Abul Fath Qabil Khan, &Amacr;d&amacr;b-i Alamgiri, edited by Abdul Ghafur Chaudhari, 2
Volumes, Lahore, 1971, Vol. I, pp. 374-76; Vol. II, pp. 791-92. On the projects of the
early 1700s, cf. for example, the discussion in William Irvine, Later Mughals, Calcutta, 1922,
pp. 21-22. section entitled Bahadur Shahs letter to Azam Shah and the latters reply; this is
based in part on Kamwar Khans chronicle, cited in note 47 below. I am grateful to Muzaffar
Alam for these references.
23
W.H. Moreland. Rank (Mansab) in the Mughal State Service, Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1936, pp. 641-65; this view also finds mention in
Athar Ali, Mughal Nobility, pp. 38-40. However, subsequent works from Aligarh take a
different line, probably on the grounds that if the Mongols and Timurids in general lacked
significant
301
a postulate that Akbars institutions were created sui generis, we might
speak of an evolving tool-box of contemporary statecraft, from which a set
of institutions were improvised and partly innovated. This would enable
us, to start
rulers
with,
to
place
less of the burden of historical
explanation on the
genius.
This, however, is
where Streusands interests lie. Rather, having

the notion of a sharp discontinuity in the nature of
the state between Akbar and his predecessors, his main thrust is two-fold.
First, he wishes to examine (in Chapter 3 of his book) whether Akbars
conquests and successful attempts at centralisation were the result of the
introduction of firearms-that is, the so-called Gunpowder Empires
hypothesis of Marshall Hodgson.24 Second, having provided us in the
following chapter with a fairly conventional political history, dealing with
the years from 1556 to about 1570, Streusand devotes space to the definitive
reforms of Akbar, which dated to the years 1572-1580, when Akbars
empire became recognizably Mughal (p. 108). This requires a description
of mansabddri and a discussion of the mahzar of 1579, leading to the
development of the idea of an Akbari constitution, to be inferred largely
from court-ritual, and Abul Fazls writings on sovereignty. On the basis of
an examination of court-ritual, Streusand attempts to demonstrate a rather
obvious point about the syncretic nature of the ideololgy under Akbar,
and his use of Hindu elements derived from earlier polities. All the while,
he stresses that his intention is not to bring to light new documentation, but
rather to read standard primary materials (such as Abul Fazls Akbar
Nama, Abd al-Qadir al-Badaonis Muntakhb ut-Tawdrikh, or Nizam alDin Ahmads Tabaqdt-i Akbari), as well as the secondary literature afresh.
accepted
as a
not
postulate
bureaucratic traditions, it follows that they could not have had anything to do with the
of the mansab
! In this context, see Shireen Moosvi, Evolution of the Mansab
under Akbar until 1596-97, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and
Ireland, 1981. No. 2, pp. 178-85. Moosvi examines briefly the relationship between the
mansab and the earlier usage mar&amacr;tib, as found under Humayun (citing Khwandamirs
Q&amacr;nun-i Hum&amacr;yun&imacr;, ed., M. Hidayat Hosain, Calcutta, 1940), but concludes that the latter is
not a precursor of the former. Now, of course, the term mansab was not a Mughal invention;
only it acquired a particular connotation with them. Again, since the term mar&amacr;tib continues
to occur in later documents, it would be interesting to investigate whether in fact its sense
there does not overlap with that of mansab.
24
Cf. Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 3 Vols., Chicago, 1974, Vol. III (The
Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times). For a reconsideration, I. Metin Kunt, The later
Muslim Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals, in Marjorie Kelly, ed., Islam: The religious
and political life of a world community, New York, 1984, pp. 112-36. Also Geoffrey Parker,
The military revolution: Military innovation and the rise of the west, 1500-1800, Cambridge,
1987. On gunpowder empires in southern India, see Burton Stein, State formation and
economy reconsidered, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. XIX, (3), 1985, and for a critique,
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Kagemusha Effect: The Portuguese, firearms and the state in
early modern South India, Moyen Orient et Océan Indien, No. 4, 1987.
origins
System
302
Concerning the Gunpowder Empires question, Streusands conclusions

do not wholly support Hodgson; he argues from brief descriptions of
Akbars sieges of Chitor, Ranthambor and Kalinjar that artillery played no
great role in his success in siege warfare. However, his later assertion
(p. 67) that firearms contributed to centralization, the distinguishing
characteristic of the gunpowder empires, in a more complex way, winds up
confusing the issue. By his own admission, the Mughals at the second
battle of Panipat in 1556 apparently had no guns (p. 53); and guns are
seen as irrelevant in one of the only two other battles examined, Tukaroi
(1575), and Haldighati (1576). To argue, as Streusand does at one point,
that the narrow margin of victory in some of these battles shows that the
Mughals needed the combination of artillery and mounted archers to win
easy victories (p. 56) is a specious form of reasoning; what he in fact
needed to demonstrate were instances where firearms did indeed make a
great deal of difference. This he does not do, even in the case of Haldighati,
which in his own words meant nothing as an engagement anyway. At the
end of a thirty-page discussion, we are hence none the wiser on the
question.
On the issue of the reforms of the 1570s and the Akbari constitution,
Streusand concludes that the official ideology under Akbar did include
significant Hindu elements in it, and that this was because the Mughal
state was hybrid-Islamic at the centre, but Hindu at the periphery: thus,
an Ottoman Sultan would have found the central bureaucracy familiar; a
Chola Rajah would have understood the limited imperial role in the
provinces. The conclusion therefore is that the Mughal government [w]as
an imperial centre supported by a shifting structure of segments (p. 181).
It is only natural, in view of this, that towards his concluding paragraphs,
as well as earlier in his book, Streusand pays obeisance to Burton Steins
segmentary state formulation, arguing that it may not be wholly inappropriate in the Mughal context (albeit with some modifications). 25 In
effect, the substance of his conclusion appears to be that despite having
undergone a process of centralisation, the Mughal state as a structure
remained, at the time of Akbars death, less centralised than say the
Ottoman state. This was, he argues, largely the result of the fact that in the.
years following the great revolt of 1580-82 in the eastern part of the
realm, Akbar compromised the principles of centralized government
which he and his closest advisers shared (p. 178). The result, in his view,
was the resort to the jagir system, and Streusand maintains that the failure
of centralising forces is clearly manifested in the execution in 1581 of
Khwaja Shah Mansur Shirazi, who had been appointed wazir in 1578, on
false accusations of rebellion (and loyalty to Mirza Hakim!) (pp. 166-70).
If we compare his monograph to the Aligarh paradigm outlined above,
25
Burton Stein, Peasant State and
Society
in Medieval South India, Delhi, 1980.
303
then, Streusand appears to depart from it in certain respects. The extent of
Mughal power and the extractive nature of the post-Akbar state do not
come through as clearly in his work as in those other writings. Further, an
attempt is made to bring in ideological elements, as well as court-ritual, in
what is clearly the result of the influence of Chicago-based anthropological history (we may note here that the book, like that of Blake is based
on a Ph.D. dissertation from the University of Chicago). Again, the zabt
system, which Athar Ali has described as the characteristic institution of
Mughal revenue administration, gets little space in his analysis, as indeed
do matters economic in general. 26 The economic significance of the incorporation of Gujarat, Bengal and Sind into the Mughal domains between
1570 and 1595, for example, is scarcely touched upon, and the focus
remains very much on imperial court and centre. This disregard for the
relationship between central state and region, and indeed for spatial
analysis in general, also characterises Blakes formulation, discussed at
greater length below.
Ideology,
Islam and the Millenium
It would appear on reflection, however, that even in his analysis of ideology

under Akbar, Streusand has chosen not to depart very far from the welltrodden path. We have already noted this in our discussion of the transition
between Humayun and Akbar. In this context, it is well-known that the
Aligarh school sees Abul Fazl as far and away the most important
thinker of the epoch, and the Akbar Nama (and its segment the Ain-i
Akbari) as the master text for an understanding of the period. The chapter
on Rawi-yi rdzi in the Ain is presented as a rational theory of kingship,
based on the social contract, which hence enabled Akbar to cut loose
from the religious elite. It also seems to be the case that Abul Fazl wished
to replace the theory of succession as a right based on descent (which
would still leave sovereignty as a shared attribute) to one based on a wider
variety of qualities besides blood and descent. In a passage of the Akbar
Ndma, aimed directly at ridiculing, albeit ex post facto, the simple Mirza
Hakims pretensions, he states:
.
Kingship is a gift of God, and is not bestowed till many thousand grand
requisiies have been gathered together in an individual. Race and
wealth and the assembling of a mob are not enough for this great
position. It is clear to the wise that a few among the holy qualities (sifut-i
qudsi) are, magnanimity, lofty benevolence, wide capacity, abundant
exuberance, exalted understanding, innate graciousness, natural courage
26
Athar Ali, Towards
an
Agrarian System, pp. 200-201,
interpretation of the Mughal empire, p. 41;also Habib,

Economy of the Mughal Empire, pp. 95-96.
and Moosvi,
304
justice, rectitude, strenuous labour, proper conduct, profound thoughtThanks be to

fulness, laudable overlooking and acceptance of excuses
God! The holy personality of the Shahinshah [Akbar] is a fount of perfect
qualities, and a mine of holy principles. 27
....
the same could not be said of Mirza Hakim, who was hence
destined to fall into the whirlpool of destruction! Now this idea, together
with the theory of divine effulgence (farr-i izidy to the ruler, and of a
notion of kingship whose raison dtre stems from a sort of social contract,
make up the key elements of Abul Fazls formulation. It is certainly true
that aspects of this formulation were adopted later by Jahangir, by
Shahjahan (who referred to himself as the shadow of God, siya-yi khud,
in dealings with the Deccan Sultanates), and subsequently even used in the
latter half of the seventeenth century by the opponents of the Mughals
(such as the Marathas) to question the legitimacy of particular rulers.
Again, this type of formulation finds mention even in the early eighteenth
century, in the context of dealings between the Mughals and their Hindu
subjects over sensitive matters of religious practice. On the other hand, it is
also often forgotten that the Ain-i Akbari was produced rather late in
Akbars half-century long reign. In the earlier decades, other ideological
avenues had been explored. The unfinished and anonymously authored
chronicle, Tdr[kh-i Khdnddn-i Timuriyya, begun in the 1580s, sought for
example to stress precisely the Timurid aspects of Akbars patrimony,
inexplicable if the ruler had been trying to divest himself of this TurkoMongol baggage.&dquo; This chronicle later attracted the attention of Akbars
grandson Shah j ahan, who-incidentally -was keen for his part to reassert
his Timurid patrimony in the context of territorial expansion in the direction of Central Asia.
More important even perhaps than the chronicle mentioned above for a
proper understanding of the evolution of ideology under Akbar is the
Tari_kh-i Alfi, which finds but brief mention in Streusands work, possibly
because it remains in manuscript form.29 This chronicle was initially conceived of, in 1581-82, as a joint project of several authors under state
supervision, but was eventually written up largely by two chroniclers:
Mulla Ahmad Thattawi and Asaf Khan Jafar Beg. As summarised by
S.A.A. Rizvi, the Trkh-i Alfi was meant by Akbar to commemmorate
the millenium of the Islamic calendar (in 1591-9L), and began not with the
Presumably
27
Akbar Nama, trans. Beveridge, Vol. II, p. 421. The context of this passage is the rebellion
of 1567. For an earlier comment on the role of this passage in Abul Fazls formulation, see Ibn
Hasan, The central structure of the Mughal empire, reprint, New Delhi, 1980, pp. 59-61.
28
For the T&amacr;r
-i Kh
&imacr;kh
&amacr;nd&amacr;n-i Timuriyya see Maulavi Abdul Muqtadir, Catalogue of the
Arabic and Pérsian Manuscripts in the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, Vol. VII
(Indian History), reprint, Patna, 1977, pp..40-48; for some illustrations from this text, see
Mughal Art of Miniature Painting at its climax, Patna (Khuda Bakhsh Library), 1984.
29
Streusand, Formation, p. 133; for an earlier brief mention, see Harbans Mukhia,
305
Timur
(thus, it was unlike the Tfrikh-I Khndn-i Timuriyya), but with the
rihlat (death of the Prophet Muhammad). Brought up to the reign of
Akbar, but eventually abandoned in favour of the Akbar Nama as the
official chronicle of the reign, the Tarikh-i Alfi presents us with something
of a puzzle. If it is indeed, as is sometimes claimed, a purely rational work
of history, it is difficult to understand why the miracles attributed to Akbar
find a place in it, in the sections written by Asaf Khan. From internal
evidence, it appears rather to have been a work aimed at posing Akbar
within the framework of Islam, as the Bddshah-i Islam, as superior to other
famed heroes of the Islamic tradition like Saladin, as a monarch disposed
to resolving difficulties between Shias and Sunnis, as well making sure that
kafirs are shouldering the burdens of Islam . -0 This is a somewhat different
image of Akbar than the secular and radically-minded monarch who
syncretised Islam and Hinduism; this Akbar is a preserver of tradition, who
seeks to remove unauthorised innovations and new regulations in religious
practice, and at whose command wolves perform the task of shepherds.
Such an image may have been meant to be divulged not within India
alone, but even to Akbars competitors, the rulers of the Safavid and
Ottoman states, and the Uzbek state of Mavarannahr. Of these the Uzbek
factor is a crucial one, and therefore surprisingly neglected in the literature.
We are aware that the Uzbek ruler Abdullah Khan proceeded in stages to
consolidate his power, over a period roughly conterminous with Akbars
own reign. Between 1551 and 1556, he was challenged by, but eventually
bested, his rival Nawruz Ahmad Khan. Then, in 1557, he captured Bukhara
and made it his capital, going on between 1573 and 1583 to take Balkh,
Samarqand, Tashkent and Farghana. It was only in 1583, however, that he
formally assumed the title of Khan, in place of his father, Iskandar.
Between the late 1570s and the late 1590s, Abdullah Khan appeared to be
a dangerous foe, a relatively orthodox Sunni monarch, who ran an increasingly tight fiscal system. Thus, once Abdullah Khan had emerged
dominant over rival clans, the Mughals had to treat with him; and it should
be recalled that in the early 1580s, Akbar maintained a correspondence
with the Uzbek ruler, which was intended partly to counter the latters
territorial ambitions and dealings with Akbars half-brother, Mirza Hakim,
who formed a sort of buffer between Akbars domains and those of
Mavarannahr. The dealings with Abdullah Khan also had another
during the reign of Akbar, New Delhi, 1972, pp. 107-8. For
manuscript, see D.N. Marshall, Mughals in India: A bibliographical survey of manuscripts, reprint, London, 1987, pp. 50-51, entry No. 166. Translated
excerpts appear in H.M Elliot and J. Dowson, eds., The History of India as told by its own
historians (The Muhammadan Period
), 8 Vols., London, 1867-77. reprint Allahabad, n.d.,
Historians and historiography
references to versions of the
Vol. V, pp. 150-76.

S.A.A. Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual
Delhi. 1975, pp. 253-62.
30
History of the Muslims
in Akbars
Reign,
New
306/
dimension: as a gambit in Akbars jockeying for status vis-d-vis the

Ottomans (with whom too the Uzbek ruler had dealings), for in at least
some of the letters, Akbar portrays himself as very much the Islamic ruler,
writing of the need, for instance, to prosecute a jihad against the Portuguese, who were impeding access to Mecca and Medina.&dquo;
To understand the larger west and central Asian context in this period,
we may equally note that in these years, on account of the approach of the
Hijri year 1000, a millenarian consciousness gripped many in the Islamic
world; these included prominent Ottoman intellectuals, who-in partial
contrast to the Mughal situation--combined it however with a sense of
political, economic and moral decline, seeing in the millenium a moment of
apocalypse.&dquo; In the Mughal domains too, millenarian feelings were not
absent, and in the course of the sixteenth century, several minor millenarian
(so-called Mahdawi) movements had been suppressed by Afghan rulers,
especially Islam Shah Sur. While maintaining distinct theological positions,
several other movements took advantage of the prevailing ambience to
gain leverage and legitimacy. For example, the Naqshbandi Sufi, Shaikh
Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624), while disassociating himself wholly from the
Mahdawis, nevertheless claimed to be the mujaddid-i alf jfni, or
renovator of Islam of the second millenium.&dquo; Sirhindis claims are
normally posed in the historiography as an orthodox ideological force that
reacted to Akbars heterodoxy. But it is possible that as late as the 1580s,
Akbar~espite having already committed himself to wooing his Rajput
constituency-had not given up seeking an alibi for himself in Islamic
terms. However, once into the 1590s, as the Uzbek threat receded and the
international context seemed less propitious, he may have decided to take
the rather safer tack offered to him by Abul Fazls formulation, and hence
abandoned the Tari_kh-i Alfi project-as well as its larger implications.
All this is admittedly within the realm of speculation. But it is plausible
speculation, of a sort that is largely absent in Streusands work, which
instead remains content to reiterate the obvious on such points. Akbars
31
Naimur Rehman Farooqi, Mughal-Ottoman Relations: A study of political and diplomatic
relations between Mughal India and the Ottoman Empire. 1556-1748, Delhi, 1989. pp. 148-49.
For the Uzbek Mavarannahr state, see B. Spüler, Central Asia from the sixteenth century to
the Russian conquests, in P.M. Holt, Ann K.S. Lambton and Bernard Lewis, eds., The
Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. I, Cambridge, 1970, pp. 468-94.
32
Cornell Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian
Mustafa &Amacr;li (1541-1600), Princeton, 1986, pp. 134-35, 244-45, passim; Cemal Kafadar,
Les troubles monétaires de la fin du XVI siècle et la prise de conscience ottomane du déclin,
Annales ESC, March-April 1991. No. 2, pp. 381-400. Incidentally, Fleischer also notes in a
footnote (p. 244) the parallels between the Ottoman consciousness and that of the T&amacr;r
-i
&imacr;kh
Alf&imacr;.
"
On Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, see Yohanan Friedmann, Shay

kh Ahmad Sirhind&imacr;: An
outline of his thought and a study of his image in the eyes of posterity, Montreal/London, 1971;
S.A.A. Rizvi. A History of Sufism in India, 2 Vols., Delhi. 1983, Vol. II, pp. 223-41.
307
of sulh-i kull (Absolute Peace) as a principle has attracted much

attention, but we may recall that even this was propagated in part through
recourse to a structure of disciples reminiscent of a Sufi order. The practice
of terming the Mughal ruler pir-o murshid brings us echoes of the relationship between the Safavid Sultans and their Qizilbash followers (and
more particularly the so-called suf iyan-i Lhejn). 34 Thus, the larger west
and central Asian context was never far, despite the implicit denial of
borrowings across state boundaries that one often encounters.
adoption
The patrimonial-bureaucratic state

If Streusands writings offer us little that is startling or new in the sphere of
ideology, what of the structure of the state itself? I have already made
mention of his nod in the direction of Burton Steins segmentary state
formulation as a possible understanding of the Mugha! state. But elsewhere, his views are more of a piece with Stephen Blakes Weberian model
of the patrimonial-bureaucratic state, which the latter defends at length in
his monograph Shahjahanabad.J5 According to Blake, small traditional
states, are often based on the idea of assimilating state to household, so
that the ruler attempted to administer, control, and finance the entire
realm as if it were part of his own private domain (p. xii). As states grew
larger, however, a compromise of the patrimonial ideal had to be undergone, and a bureaucracy brought in, thus giving rise to the patrimonialbureaucratic empire _ In such empires between 1400 and 1750, moreover,
one had a sovereign city as a capital, which was the kingdom in miniature.
In this city, everything was dominated by the imperial and noble households : the urban economy, cultural life, the structure of society (p. xiii). In
brief, the Mughal state of Blake encompassed everything in the sovereign
state
34
Cf. Jean Aubin, Révolution chiite et conservatisme: Les soufis de L&amacr;hej&amacr;n, 1500-1514.
Moyen Orient et Océan Indien, No. 1, 1984, pp. 1-40; Aubin, Lavènement des Safavides
reconsidéré, Moyen Orient et Océan Indien, No. 5, 1988, pp. 1-130; for a later period,
Masashi Haneda, Le Ch&amacr;h et les Qizilb&amacr;&scaron;: Le système militaire safavide. Berlin, 1987. On the
Mughal case, compare J.F. Richards, The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar
and Jahangir, in Richards, ed., Kingship and Authority in South Asia, Madison, 1978,
pp. 252-89. Another interesting avenue to explore is the parallel between Akbars practice
at this juncture, and that of another of his ideological opponents, Bayazid Ansari. leader of
the Raushaniyya movement.
35
For an earlier version of the argument, see Stephen P. Blake, The patrimonialbureaucratic empire of the Mughals, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXXIX, (1), 1979,
pp. 77-94. For earlier attempts to combine Weberian theory with a return to personalityoriented history, see M.N. Pearson, Political participation in Mughal India, The Indian
Economic and Social History Review, Vol. IX, (2), 1972, pp. 113-31, especially p. 131, and
Pearson, Shivaji and the decline of the Mughal empire, The Journal of Asian Studies,
Vol. XXXV, (2), 1976, pp. 221-35. More recently, Hardy. The authority of Muslim Kings.
308
and since the city was the kingdom in miniature, it seems to follow
that it encompassed everything in the kingdom as well. This model, if read
literally, appears to be the Ahgarh model of centralisation taken to its very
extreme. Reconciling it with the segmentary state hence presents us with
more or less insurmountable conceptual difficulties. Streusand suggests a
vague soiution: a patrimonial-bureaucratic central structure, petering out
into an increasingly weak hold over the countryside. But the two models
are so diametrically opposed that the very idea of a weighted average
between the two seems untenable.
It is of course true that evidence in favour of viewing the Mughal state as
segmentary can be found. Let us consider a specific set of sources, namely
the travel accounts of contemporary Europeans. Several of these writers,
like the Dutch merchant Francisco Pelsaert (1595-1630), and the French
physician Francois Bernier (1620-1688), can hardly be used to buttress
the view of the Mughal empire as centralised at its height (viz. the
seventeenth century); in fact Bernier, in the quotation cited at the outset of
this article, stresses the limited nature of Mughal power, as does Pelsaert in
his Remonstrantie written somewhat earlier.&dquo; However, while ignoring or
suppressing this particular facet of Berniers writings, modern historians
like Athar Ali and Irfan Habib are not in the least reluctant to accept a
good part of his other observations on such issues as jag[rdarf and its
implications, the billion inflow into India, the roots of crisis in Aurangzebs
reign, and so on.&dquo;
The key text that is used is Berniers letter to Louis XIVs minister JeanBaptiste Colbert (1619-1683), written in the late 1660s.~ This letter concerns four issues, (a) the extent of Hindoustan, (b) the currencies in use,
and the absorption of gold and silver there, (c) resources, armies, and
the administration of justice, and (d) the principal Cause of the Decline
of the States of Asia. In the latter half of this letter, we find the first
articulation of the theory of the agrarian crisis which stems from the
inherently unstable nature of ji2girdiri; this view was first taken on board,
among modern writers, by W.H. Moreland, and then subsequently by the
historians we have mentioned above.-&dquo; it has, however, been pointed out
city,
36
D.H.A. Kolff and H.W. van Santen, eds., De Geschriften van Francisco Pelsaert over
1627: Kroniek en Remonstrantie, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979; François
Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, AD 1656-1668, trans. A. Constable, ed., V.A. Smith,
reprint New Delhi, 1989.
37
See for example Irfan Habib, Agrarian relations and land revenue: North India, in
Raychaudhuri and Habib, eds., Cambridge Economic History, Vol. I. p. 243; Shireen
Moosvi, Scarcities, prices and exploitation: The agrarian crisis, 1658-1670, Studies in History,
(n.s.), Vol.I (1), 1986; earlier, Habib, The Agrarian System, pp. 320-21.
38
Bernier, Letter to Monseigneur Colbert concerning the Extent of Hindoustan,
pp. 200-238.
39
W.H. Moreland. From Akbar to Aurangzeb: A study in Indian economic history,
London, 1923, pp. 304-5, passim. Also Moreland, The Agrarian System of Moslem India:
A Historical Essay with Appendices, London, 1929, pp. 146-48.
Mughal Indie,
309
than one occasion by other recent writers that Berniers writings

those
of his contemporary Jean Chardin on the Safavids), have a
(like
rhetorical
specific
purpose in relation to his correspondents in France. In
wished to criticise revenue-farming (which also existed
Bernier
particular,
in contemporary France) as a principle, and equally to make an argument
for the absolute need for security in private property in land, which he
presented as more or less absent in the Mughal India of the period. By so
doing, Bernier clearly intended to influence the policies followed by
Colbert in France: Mughal India was thus the screen on which he presented
his views of what would happen to France if certain despotic and tyrannical
policies were followed.&dquo;
But Berniers conception also fits in quite neatly with the idea of the
segmentary state. Among the peculiar chiefs or sovereigns who lived
under Mughal rule, he counts a large list, starting with the petty sovereignties
bordering the Persian frontier, and going on to the Pathans, the rulers of
Bijapur and Golconda, and finally the Hindu Rajas-especially the Rajputs.
As Bernier saw it then, the Mughal state structure could be divided
vertically into two. First, there was a superstructure, comprising a tyrant,
who however finds himself in a hostile country, or nearly so (p. 209), and
who hence has need of numerous armies, so that he can maintain himself
in such a country, in the midst of domestic and powerful enemies.. But
below this level is quite another, of the native princes (princes naturels),
subordinated on the one hand to the Mughals, and on the other hand to the
Brahmin priests, who keep them subject to the Gentile religion. Thus we
have (a) numerous centres or political domains, (b) differentiated political
power and sovereignty, so that the native princes wield appropriate
power, and the Mughals full, royal sovereignty, (c) autonomous administrative capabilities and coercive means with the native princes, and
(d) the recognition by these centres, through ritual and other forms, of
Mughal authority. Since these four characteristics define, for Burton Stein,
what is a segmentary state, Berniers Mughal kingdom certainly is one.&dquo;.
But casting our net somewhat wider in terms of sources and testimonies,
problems begin to arise. There is. first of all, the extensive use by the
Mughals of prebends (jagirs), which has no clear place in the segmentary
conception. Nor indeed do the directly-taxed Crown lands (or Khczlisa),
whose extent tended to vary quite substantially over time, and which could
be quite dispersed. But if the segmentary conception is of little help here,
on more
40
Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, London, 1974, pp. 399-400. 473-74;
Sylvia Murr, La Politique "au Mogol" selon Bernier: Appareil conceptuel, rhétorique stratégique, philosophie morale. in J. Pouchepadass and H. Stern. eds., De la Royauté à lÉtat
dans le monde indien, Collection Purus&amacr;rtha No. 13. Paris, 1991. pp. 239-311. For Chardin,
see Journal du Voyage du Chevalier Chardin en Perse et aux Indes Orientales, 3 Vols.,
Amsterdam, 1711;
Kroell, Douze lettres de Jean Chardin, Journal Asiatique, 270,
Nos. 3-4, 1982.
41
Burton Stein, The segmentary state: Interim reflections, in J. Pouchepadass and
H. Stern, eds., De la Royauté à lEtat, pp. 217-38.
Anne
310
the patrimonial-bureaucratic state proves something of a red herring as

well. The khflixa lands scarcely represent a patrimonial element, nor
despite the association of jgrdr with mansabdarf can the jagirs be
termed a recompense to a bureaucracy. A recent study by Chetan Singh
with a very different perspective to that of Streusand and Blake, which
considers the Mughai state from the viewpoint of a region (namely, Punjab),
concludes that Crown officals may have tended as early as the seventeenth
century to acquire local roots, modifying the notional rule of periodic
transfers which suggests a relatively bureaucratic system at work.42
Besides, the patrimonial-bureaucratic state is again bound up closely to
the conception of a Mughal state structure which is already defined by the
end of Akbars reign, and the logic of which works itself out through the
seventeenth century. Like the segmentary state as used by Streusand, it has
iitile room for the depiction of a painfully improvised process of state
building, whether at the level of the shifting ideologies existent in different
epochs, or the incorporation and modification of regional traditions, or the
expansion of the agrarian frontier, of trade and manufacture, and the
creation of new opportunities which had an impact on the essential character of the Mughal state.43 In sum, these views are excessively focused on
structure and neglect the historical process. In this sense, they cannot
provide a fundamental challenge to the paradigm of the Aligarh school,
which is again based on treating the Mughal state as a fixed structure, a
,system created under Akbar.
The
omnipresent
state
Whether one agrees with his conception of the Mughal state or not, much
remains that is potentially of interest in Blakes Shahjahanabad. After a
brief opening chapter on Delhis other cities, and his patrimonial-bureaucratic theory of state, Blakes book passes on to the longest of the seven
chapters, one entitled Cityscape. This is followed by others, entitled
Society, Economy, Courtly and Popular Culture, Aftermath of
Imperium, and Comparison and Conclusion. The first four of these
chapters promise to provide insights into a Mughal city of a type that does
not exist in the literature; oniy a handful of articies and the odd monograph
42
Chetan
Singh,
Centre and
Periphery
in the
Mughal
State: The
century Panjab, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. XXII, (2), 1988; also
of seventeenthhis Region and

own examination of
case
see
Empire: Panjab in the seventeenth century, Delhi, 1991, pp. 31-44. My

Sind, and the s&umacr;ba of Thatta, suggests that members of the family of Mirza Jani Beg
persistently gravitated to the region as Mughal officials, until at least the mid-seventeenth
century. Indeed, if the mansabd&amacr;rs were bureaucrats, there is little sense in their depiction
by Aligarh school historians themselves (in particular Athar Ali) as theMughal nobility! At
best then, they were a sort of noblesse de service.
43
For a reformulation that attempts to take these aspects into consideration, see Alam and
Subrahmanyam, State-building in South Asia and the Mughals.
311
deal with the urban history of the epoch. The centrepiece of the exercise is
naturally a detailed map, which is to be found on pages 72-73, and which
depicts Shahjahanabad in 1739. To ones surprise, however, one discovers
that this map is in fact based on a mid-nineteenth century Survey of India
outline, with details filled in from earlier evidence. Thirty-seven individual
structures are identified within the city, and described rapidly (pp. 75--82),
sometimes in one or two lines. A sense of change and chronology remains
absent: modifications in the city between 1639 and 1739--the rise of new
quarters and the fall of others, the shifting relationship between Shahjahanabad and its suburbs (such as Jaipura, or the Shia settlement, even
today called Karbala, where Safdar Jang chose to be buried in the eighteenth century) are never plainly set out, even if the suburbs are described
(pp. 57--66).
Nevertheless, the Cityscape chapter is an important one, more carefully
done than one can encounter in the normal writings of historians of Mughal
India. No comparable study of Aurangabad or Lahore exists, though
Fatehpur Sikri and even Agra are relatively well-served.44 It revisits a
theme that Blake had already touched on in his paper in Delhi through the
Ages, edited by R.E. Frykenberg, and also sets the stage for the chapters
that follow, in the sense of providing the spatial context for social, economic
and cultural interactions among the residents of the city. 45 As in his earlier
essay, Blake seeks to argue that the plan of Shahjahanabad reflects both
Hindu and Islamic influences (p. 32). This seems quite likely, but the
authors belief that the architects of Shahjahanabad had access to specific
Sanskrit treatises like the Manasdra (from the fifth to seventh century) is
the purest speculation. Indeed, both Blake and Streusand have somewhat
ahistorical views on what constitutes Hindu thinking on statecraft and
kingship in the period, and are for the most part content to assume that an
immutable classical model (such as that set out by Ronald Inden), holds
good for all time~ven if no reference to it can be found in the texts of the
Mughal period. Equally, the references to how Shahjahanabads structure
44
On
Agra,
see
I.P.
Gupta,
Urban
Glimpses of Mughal India: Agra,
the
Imperial Capital
(16th and 17th Centuries), Delhi, 1986, which for some reason does not appear in Blakes
bibliography; on Fatehpur Sikri, see inter alia, Michael Brand and Glenn D. Lowry, eds.,
Fatehpur Sikri, Bombay, 1987. On Lahore, we have the useful but rather brief discussion in
Chetan Singh, Region and Empire, pp. 177-84.
45
S.P. Blake, Cityscape of an imperial capital: Shahjahanabad in 1739, in R.E. Frykenberg,
ed., Delhi through the ages: Essays in urban history, culture and society, Delhi, 1986,
pp. 152-91.
46
Cf. Ronald Inden, Ritual Authority and Cyclic Time in Hindu Kingship, in J.F. Richards.
ed., Kingship and Authority, pp. 28-73. For a more historical approach to the issue of
kingship in one set of Hindu states, see Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka-period Tamil Nadu, Delhi,
1992. Indens own position on such matters as historicity seems to have changed somewhat in
his more recent writings, cf. his discussion of the Rashtrakutas in Inden, Imagining India,
Oxford, 1990.
312
reflects traditional Islamic architecture seem laboured, and consist of

citing general texts (Sayyed Hossein Nasr on cosmological doctrines, and
von Grunebaum on Islam), as if these contain some eternal verities.
The chapters that follow (Society, Economy, and Culture), are all
uniformly marked by a single-minded focus on the state. Blakes understanding of society in Shahjahanabad is defined, by his own admission
(p. 83) through his notion that the metaphors of sovereign city as mansion
and patrimonial-bureaucratic empire as household are crucial. He chooses to
examine the whole of the social fabric through the imperial household and
the households of the amirs, with the rest of the population entering the
picture only as the clients of one of these two. He assures us that the
patron-client relationships between the emperor and the great men and
between them and the members of their households bound the entire city
together in a kind of vast extended family (p. 103). The state here has,
then, swallowed up society.
This leaves little scope for the economy, or for that matter culture. The
economy is dealt with in a very brief eighteen pages, where changes in the
economy over the century 1639-1739 find little place. Rather, the text is
devoted largely to brief descriptions of workshops (kar_khanas), and to the
appositeness to the Mughal case of a particular anthropological model of
premodern economic organisation. Again, the state looms large. According to Blake, in Mughal India, the emperor considered the economic
resources of both city and empire his personal preserve. To be sure,
compromises had to be effected on occasion, but the ideal of running both
city and empire as one big household workshop remained and was never
abandoned (p. 121). Thus, the economy too is apparently little more
than an appendage of the state. We are assured that elite households, by
virtue of their wealth and status, completely dominated the economic
process in Shahjahanabad; as if that were not enough, we are even asked
to believe that a substantial share of the wealth of the empire-over 40
per cent in fact-was concentrated in Shahjahanabad (p. 131)! The
manner in which this conclusion is arrived at is simple: standard calculations
of the share of the mansabdars in jama are used, together with the notion
that if they maintained residences in Shahjahanabad, their entire wealth
must have been there!
There follows the chapter on Courtly and Popular Culture, where one
might have expected to escape the shadow of the state. Of course, this
cannot be the case in the chapters first half, on courtly culture, which deals
with the upbringing and training of nobles, divided into men of the pen
(ahl-i qalam) and men of the sword (ahl-i saif). Evidence is largely
anecdotal, and intended to show that the two categories did not remain
wholly watertight. The description of popular culture, which occupies the
second half of this chapter is drawn almost exclusively from a single source,
the Risalah-i Salar Jung, written by Dargah Quli Khan in the early
313
1740s.&dquo; Now, the greater part of this text is simply not about popular
as generally understood. Khyal and Dhrupad singers, acting
which
troupes
performed for the imperial household, and musicians who
on
the
bin and other instruments of art-music, did so very often
performed
within the aegis of elite patronage, and Dargah Quli Khan was obviously
himself one such elite patron. However, Blake is clearly unfamiliar with
the traditions within which such activities can be located, which is further
confounded by numerous misreadings of the manuscript.&dquo; On occasion,
Dargah Ouli Khan does enter into what can truly be called the popular
culture of eighteenth-century Delhi; but to group art-music, as well as the
poetry of Mirza Bedil and Mirza Mazhar Jan-i Janan under the head of
popular culture suggests either that Blake is providing a radical redefinition of the spheres of elite and popular, or that from his perspective the
popular can be subsumed under the elite. Or, to put the matter somewhat
differently, not even the popular culture of Delhi can escape the clutches
of the state in this treatment; the state is not merely omnipotent but
culture,
omnipresent.
The last substantive chapter, Aftermath of Imperium, follows inevitably
from this logic. It is argued that after Nadir Shahs attack on the city in
1739, there followed a dismal and dispiriting time, lasting till 1803,
leading in turn to a period of peace and healing (p. 161) which continued
to 1857. Since it has already been argued in earlier chapters by Blake that
the city is no more than a mirror of the State, it naturally follows that the
first period-when the Mughal state entered into decline-would have led
47
been
Footnotes 105
to
175 of the
chapter
refer
solely
to this text
(to which there had already
twenty references in the first 100 footnotes). For
some reason that remains

of this text in the British Museum, apparently
unaware that at least two editions, besides translations into Urdu and English exist of the
sections describing Delhi in this work, under the title Muraqqa-i Dehli. For editiens of Delhi
sections of the Ris&amacr;la-yi S&amacr;l&amacr;r Jang, see Dargah Quli Khan, Muraqqa-i Dehli, ed., Hakim
Sayyid Muzaffar Husain, Hyderabad, 1926; the later edition, with an Urdu translation, by
N.H. Ansari, Delhi, 1981; most recently, the translation into English by Chander Shekhar
some
obscure. Blake refers
to
the
manuscript
and Shama Mitra Chenoy, Muraqqa-e-Dehli: The Mughal Capital in Muhammad Shahs
Time, Delhi, 1989, which however has a rather awkward flavour and some inaccuracies. Had
Blake consulted these editions, certain obvious errors could have been avoided, on which
more in note 48 below. This is not the only instance in which Blake cites manuscript versions
of Persian texts, while ignoring critical editions that collate several manuscripts. Other
examples include Mirza Sangin Beg, Sair ul-Man&amacr;zil, ed., S.H. Qasimi, New Delhi, 1982;
Bakhtawar Khan, Mir&amacr;t ul-&Amacr;lam, ed., Sajida Alavi, Lahore. 1979; Muhammad Hadi
Kamwar Khan. Tazkirat us-Sal&amacr;t&imacr;n Chag
t&amacr;, ed., Muzaffar Alam, Bombay, 1980.
h
48
A few examples will suffice here. In the text, there are curious explications such as that
sic is a kind of song, and that qaww&amacr;l (sic!) is a special kind of singing (p. 157). As
(
iy&amacr;l )
kh
for misreadings, these are legion: the singer Rahimsen appears as Jimsen; a dancer Kali
Ganga appears asKaki Kanka; at one point, the description of two singers Jani and Ghulam
Rasul is conflated with that of one Baqir Tamburchi (which appears next in the text); and a
certain Hasan Khan Rebabi is found to be an orthodox Muslim, when Dargah Quli Khan
says no more than that God should pity him in his poverty!
314
Shahjahanabad to decline, while the latter period-when British power

established itself in the city-would bring peace and security to Shahjahanabad, and a slow, gradual return to health (p. 169).
The
missing
merchant
One of the reasons why the state must carry such a burden in Blakes
formulation is because of his belief in the extremely weak position of other
sections in urban society, in particular merchants. Since cities in the period
were usually major centres of exchange (with production probably being
less important, relatively speaking), one expects to find in any urban
history a detailed discussion of merchant activity, the more so since sources
on the issue are far from absent. Thus, ideally, one would have expected to
see Shahjahanabad as a centre, linked to smaller provincial towns in the
suba of Delhi,
to other
major cities on the trade route which ran via the

and
west
Asia, to the centres of the Gangetic valley, and
Punjab
via Rajasthan to the ports of the west coast and Gujarat. However, while
speaking of a hierarchy of central places in some sections, Blakes analysis
does not take him in this direction. Instead, following what is by now a
well-established (but seldom investigated) tradition in Mughal studies, he
posits that merchant activity is not worth considering because a gulf existed
between the worlds of trade and politics; the merchants of Mughal India
and Shahjahanabad
[were] lacking in power and influence (p. 111). Not
only this: In Mughal India, merchants were not protected by the Mughal
government. They were subjected to illegal tolls and taxes, robberies were
common, and arbitrary payments were often demanded. In fact, many of
traders (sic) expected to be plundered by rulers (p. 110). From this follows
the familiar next stage in the argument:
to central
...
It was not until the English East India Company began to extend its
control over the subcontinent in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries and introduced the principles of private property, sanctity of
contract, and rule of law that a true market economy hospitable to
merchants began to develop (p. 112).
Of course, not all cliches are false. However, in the instance at hand,
Blakes views are of some importance for his larger constructs, for justifying his cavalier treatment of merchant communities in the city, and for
his view of the exchange economy as no more than an appendage of the
households of the ruler and amirs (pp. 116-20). It underpins blanket
assertions, such as that the merchants who staffed these markets, many of
whom were Khattris, should be seen as clients, members of elite househo!ds,
and not as independent businessmen (p. 117)-for which Blake cites no
reference in contemporary evidence. In the final analysis, this view of
315
merchant
activity seems to rest on a partial reading of secondary literature,

single piece of evidence, showing that none of the dated Hindu
temples in Shahjahanabad were built between 1639 and 1739-which
apparently Mughal intimidation of Hindu merchants (pp. 110-11)!
and
Nor is it free from internal contradictions. If the ruler and amirs in

seventeenth century Mughal India were so deeply implicated in trade that
markets were offshoots of their households, it is hard to explain the lack of
interest in trade on the part of these very groups, that Blake also finds to
be the case (p. 111). Instead of this rather unsatisfactory analysis, one
could suggest an alternative line as follows. Dealings between the Mughal
state, nobles, and the trading economy took several forms. First,
manxabdirs themselves at times took a substantial interest in trade, owning
shipping in ports such as Thatta, Hughli and Balasore, and on occasion
practising privileged trade (saudd-yi khczs). Such was the case with Asaf
Khan, Shayista Khan, Muhammad Sayyid (Muazzam Khan) and others.
Members of the royal household, including Shahjahan himself, his daughter
Jahanara, and others, also were engaged in maritime trade, as were Dara
Shukoh and Aurangzeb as princes. Such trade required the use of agents,
but also implied a view of the world in which trade was not irrelevant or
marginal. Whether or not customs-revenues were a large proportion of
land revenues is for the most part irrelevant in this instance, for it is not the
fisc but the economy of mamabdari households that is at issue here. At the
same time, once we accept this view, we are better placed to understand
Mughal expansion in Gujarat, Bengal and Sind, the capture of Hughli from
the Portuguese in 1632, or the later campaigns against Chittagong.41
There was a second form of interaction between the state and trade.
Mercantile networks facilitated the flow of goods and liquid resources in a
way that was potentially advantageous to the Mughals. There is no doubt
that from the early seventeenth century, hundi networks between Surat
and Ahmedabad, and Agra, were extensively used by Mughal officials.
Later in the same century, the fiscal resources of Bengal also came to be
transferred to the capital in the same way, through existing channels of
trade. It is possible that individual jagirdars used similar means to have
money remitted from their jagirs to their personal headquarters. These
mercantile networks brought in bullion to feed Mughal mints, helped
promote the expansion of commercial agriculture and manufacturing for
distant markets, and even linked together regions at moments of scarcity.
Even though the Mughal state was not gerry-built on these networks (as
has been argued by some), it was nevertheless not the case that autonomous
mercantile activity was anathema to the Mughals. Historians often cite the
49
On these questions, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam. The Portuguese Empire in Asia,
1500-1700: A political and economic history, London. 1993 (in press). Chs. 5 and 6; also
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Iranians Abroad: Intra-Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern
State Formation, The Journal of Asian Studies. Vol. LI, (2), May 1992.
316
seventeenth century
memoir, Ardhakathinaka, of a Jain merchant

evidence of the hostility of the Mughal state to merchants.
Yet, an examination of a number of contemporary European instances
shows that it was not unknown for middle-level state officials to extract
protection from merchants even in those states. The issue is whether such
exactions acted as a substantial check on merchant activity in general, and
on the accumulation of mercantile profits, and in general caused merchants
to cower within the safety of four walls. Historians of trade in India will be
inclined to view this portrayal, which is at considerable variance with
recent research, with some scepticism.&dquo;
Banarasidas,
as
Wider horizons
The writings of both Streusand and Blake are characterised by a common
feature: the explicit desire to pose the Mughals in a wider context. This is a
laudable objective, though obviously these wider horizons could have been
as much within south Asia as outside of it. For example, given the recent
rash of publications on the city of Vijayanagara in south India, it might
have been an interesting exercise to compare it to Shahjahanabad.11 Again,
in the case of Streusands analysis, it might have been of some utility to
analyse ideas on kingship deriving from elsewhere in south Asia in the
sixteenth century, rather than resting content with references to the classical
Hindu model. To take the example of Vijayanagara once again, during the
period of Krishnadevaraya (r. 1509-29), an enormous literature was produced at the court, including some attributed to the ruler himself. Since
many elements of the popular image of Akbar in north India, including the
dealings between him and Birbal, and the idea of the navaratna, bear a
close resemblance to myths about Krishnadevarayas court, this comparison remains an avenue with some potential. 53
50
Cf. Mukund Lath, ed. and trans. Ardhakath&amacr;naka: Half a Tale, Jaipur, 1981. For the
example of the use of this text, see Tapan Raychaudhuri, The commercial
entrepreneur in pre-colonial India: Aspirations and expectations. A note, in Roderich Ptak
and Dietmar Rothermund, eds., Emporia, Commodities and Entrepreneurs in Asian Maritime
Trade, c. 1400-1750, Stuttgart, 1991, especially pp. 342-45.
51
James C. Boyajian, Portuguese Bankers in the Court of Spain, 1626-1650, New Brunswick,
1983. Here, I would agree with the views expressed on the question by Irfan Habib,
Merchant communities in pre-colonial India, in James Tracy, ed., The rise of merchant
empires: Long-distance trade in the early modern world 1350-1750, New York, 1990,
pp. 371-99.
52
On Vijayanagara as an urban centre, see for example J,M. Fritz and G. Michell, Interpreting the plan of a medieval Hindu capital: Vijayanagara, World Archaeology, Vol. XIX,
(1), 1987, pp. 105-29; Vasundhara Filliozat, Les quartiers et marchés de Hampi, Bulletin
de lÉcole Française dExtrême Orient, Vol. LXIV, 1977, pp. 39-42.
For surveys of the literature of this period, see V. Narayana Rao, Afterword, in
H. Heifetz and V. Narayana Rao, trans. and ed., For the Lord of the Animals—Poems from
the Telugu: The K&amacr;lahast&imacr;&sacute;vara &Sacute;atakamu of Dhurjati, Delhi, 1987, pp. 131-66; also David
most recent
"
317
Blake in the concluding chapter of his book does not look so far south,
but he looks both east and west. The cities with which he chooses to
compare Shahjahanabad are, within Mughal India itself, Agra, to the west
Istanbul and Isfahan, and to the east Edo and Peking. The comparison
occupies less than thirty pages, and follows a set pattern. In each case, the
general features of the states-the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Iran, Tokugawa
Japan, and Ming and Ching China-are set out, followed by a description of
the city, and then an assertion of the general applicability of the patrimonialbureaucratic model, and its concomitant, the idea of the sovereign city.
It would be tedious to discuss each of these comparisons once more in
detail here, and so I shall confine myself to one cas~-that of the Ottomans.
A curious feature of Blakes comparative exercise is the quite limited
literature he cites on Istanbul and the Ottoman empire. The description of
Istanbul rests largely on the works of Bernard Lewis and the entry for
Istanbul by Halil Inalcik in the Encyclopaedia of Islam; a particular omission
is Robert Mantrans general study of daily life in the city in the sixteenth
century Mantrans careful attempt, even in this semi-popular work, to
balance Istanbul as an administrative city and seat of the Empire, against
its other features-as a mercantile, religious and manufacturing centrecould well have served as a model for how to write a history of Shahjahanabad that talks of issues other than the court and the amirs. Admittedly
the sources for Ottoman urban history are far richer than those available
for the Mughals, but the issue here is of conception as much as the
deployment of evidence. For, Blakes view of both the Ottoman state and
Istanbul is reductionist in character, again neglects chronology and development for structure, and hence fails for example to locate in proper
perspective the relationship between Ottoman expansion into Iraq, the
Red Sea littoral, north Africa and eastern Europe, and the character of the
state itself and of its capital.
A major problem with the comparison is that the relationship between
Istanbul and other urban centres in the Ottoman domains remains in the
shadow. Unlike Shahjahanabad, Istanbul was far and away the largest
urban centre in the region, with other centres in Anatolia being quite small
in comparison. This was not so with Shahjahanabad, for Agra-even after
the court had shifted from it-continued to be comparable to it in order of
magnitude. Further, Istanbul-as the former capital of the Byzantine
empire-~njoyed a far greater and more continuous historically accumulated prestige than Delhi, again on account of the rivalry with Agra.
D. Shulman, The King and the Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry, Princeton, 1985,
pp. 180-200.
54
Cf. Mantran. La vie quotidienne à Istanbul au siècle de Soliman le Magnifique, second
edition, Paris, 1990; first edition. 1965, under the title La vie quotidienneà Constantinople au
).
temps de Soliman le Magnifique et de ses sucesseurs (XVIe et XVIIe siècles
318
Finally. and crucially (as Mantran reminds us), Istanbul was a maritime
city, and had a particularly remarkable port, on which it depended for the
greater part of the economic life of the capital.5 Thus, Istanbul was far
more than a sovereign-city (ddr al-saltanat), only one of the many epithets
applied to it. Indeed, this point can as well be made of Shahjahanabad as
well. 56
Ottoman and, to a lesser extent, Safavid historiography undoubtedly has
a great deal to offer the student of the Mughals. Urban history is certainly
one of the fields in which Ottomanists are far in advance of their counterparts who study the Mughals. Besides Istanbul, excellent monographic
studies exist of Cairo (by Andre Raymond and others), Jerusalem, Aleppo,
Bursa, Izmir, Ankara, Kayseri (the last two by Suraiya Faroqhi) and a
number of other towns. 57 Yet, what all of these studies stress is the vivacity
and complexity of urban life, which extends far beyond a mere discussion
of the participation of the ruler and nobility therein. Even the study of
building construction under state patronage has afforded to Ottomanists a
view of the participation of social groups other than the elite in the process,
just as the analysis of the Janissary revolts has ramifications extending far
beyond the state. There is clearly a lesson to be learnt here.
If one of the major gains to be had from opening up comparisons
between the Mughals and Ottomans is methodological, it is not merely
restricted to urban history. Cornell Fleischers study of Mustafa Ali
(1541-1600), an Ottoman chronicler, administrator and ideologue, presents
us with a model of sophisticated analysis, combining psychological insights,
with social history and the history of thought on statecraft, It far surpassess any analysis that one can find on such figures in the Mughal case,
where the biographies of even such fascinating figures as Abdur-Rahim
Khan-i Khanan, the celebrated general, administrator, poet and patron of
55
Mantran, La vie quotidienne, 2nd edition, p. 51; for Istanbuls dominance over the
Anatolian urban network, see Leila T. Erder and Suraiya Faroqhi, The development of the
Anatolian urban network during the sixteenth century, Journal of the Economic and Social
History of the Orient, Vol. XXIII, (3), 1980, pp. 265-303.
56
Marc Gaborieau, Villes de toile et villes de pierre: Les capitales mogholes etaient-elles
des camps?, paper presented to the Congress on Villes Asiatiques, Meudon, December 1989.
Also see S. Nurul Hasan, The Morphology of a Medieval Indian City: A case-study of
Shahjahanabad in the 18th and early 19th century, Urban History Association of India,
Amritsar, 1982.
57
Cf. Suraiya Faroqhi, Towns and townsmen in Ottoman Anatolia: Trade, crafts and food
production in an urban setting, 1520-1650, Cambridge. 1984; Faroqhi, Men of modest substance : Houseowners and House Property in Seventeenth-Century Ankara and Kayseri,
Cambridge, 1987; André Raymond, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au XVIII siècle, 2
Volumes. Damascus, 1973-74; Raymond, The great Arab cities in the 16th-18th centuries: An
Introduction, New York, 1984.
58
Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual. Of course, even within the context of the Ottoman
historiography. Fleischers work must be recognised as unusual, rather than representative.
319
the arts, are in the final analysis worthy but somewhat dull exercises. 59
Much the same can be said of other figures such as Abul Fazl and his
brother, Abul Faiz Faizi, on both of whom a wealth of material--including
their letter-collections (insha)--exists. If indeed one wished to
the
issues addressed by Streusand in his book, namely statecraft, ideological
currents, and factional politics in Akbars reign, a thorough exploitation of
these materials would be in order.
At the same time, an analysis of the ideology of the Mughal court and
attempts to seek legitimacy cannot be achieved solely through recourse to
Persian chronicles and correspondence. We may also seek to examine
other images of the ruler produced and propagated by the court, be it in
Sanskrit or in the vernacular literature ef the epoch. Obviously, these may
have been destined in part for a different audience than tha-t which read the
Akbar Nfma or the Tinkh-I Alfi, but they are none the less significant for
that. Among the important vernacular works, we may count the writings in
Brajbhasha of Keshavdas (b. 1555) from Orcha, who in around 1612 wrote
the lahangr-yas-candrik in honour of the Mughal ruler, in which-among
other things-he praises Jahangir as master of both faiths (duhurii dn kau
sahib). It is significant in this particular case, that while Jahangir receives
fulsome praise, the personage of Akbar is given short shrift, reflecting the
political pressures of the moment on the poet (whose main patron, Bir
Singh Deo of Orcha, had been responsible for the assassination of Abul
Fazl)60! Thus, what is evidently in order is a far closer coordination between the fields of literary, social and political history, of the sort that
Fleischer is able to accomplish in the Ottoman case.
reopen
Summing up
To conclude then, it may be premature to state that fresh winds have begun
to blow from the west through the Mughal historiography. Indeed, the
59
&amacr;n-i Kh
&amacr;n&amacr;n and his literary circle, Ahmedabad,
Compare C.R. Naik, Abdur Rah&inodot;m Kh
1966, and Annemarie Schimmel, A Dervish in the Guise of a Prince: Kh&amacr;n-i Kh&amacr;n&amacr;n Abdur
Rahim as a Patron, in Barbara Stoler Miller, ed., The Powers of Art: Patronage in Indian
Culture, Delhi, 1992, pp. 202-23. Far more disappointing is Fauzia Zareen Abbas, Abdul
Qadir Badauni-as a man and historiographer, Delhi, 1987.
60
See, for example, Ronald Stuart McGregor, Hindi Literature from Its Beginnings to the
Nineteenth Century (A History of Indian Literature, ed., Jan Gonda, Vol. VIII, Fasc. 6),
Wiesbaden, 1984, pp. 119-29, especially pp. 128-29. McGregors discussion of the period
of Akbar rests in good measure on Saryu Prasad Agraval, Akbari darb&amacr;r ke hindi kavi,
Allahabad, 1950. On a particular form of praise-verse and its exponents like Tansen, see
Françoise Delvoye Nalini, Les chants dhrupad en langue braj des poètes-musiciens de
lInde moghole, in Françoise Mallison, ed., Litteratures médievales de lInde du nord:
Contributions de Charlotte Vaudeville et de ses élèves. Paris, 1991, pp. 139-85. On Sanskrit
literature
at
the
Mughal
Learning, reprint, Delhi,
court,
1981.
see
Jatindra Bimal
Chaudhry,
Muslim
Patronage
to
Sanskrit
320
principal conclusion of the present essay has been that the works that have
been considered here often echo, even in exaggerated ways, the orthodoxies
of the past three decades and more, on the history of the Mughal state. The
major problem, it would seem, is the excessive preoccupation with identifying an essential structure; this runs parallel to existing tendencies to speak
constantly of the systems in operation under the Mughals, such as the
agrarian system, the imperial monetary system, the mansab system, the
jagir system, and so on.61 This preoccupation has in turn led to a seeming
conflict that has been fought out in the arena of models, where the
patrimonial-bureaucratic has jousted with the segmentary, and the
uniquely (perhaps semi-feudal?) Mughal model. I have attempted to
argue that the acceptance or rejection of these (usually pre-fabricated)
models does little to enhance our understanding of the Mughal state and its
history. Ihis is, I believe, not a reason for despair, but rather one for hope.
It opens the way to an alternative approach to the Mughal period, one that
is
even-handed in its treatment of social groups, source-materials,

and epochs.
Several possible avenues thus appear open for researchers on the sixteenth and seventeenth century history of Mughal India who wish to leave
the beaten track, as it has been defined in the past three decades. One
possibility is to investigate in a systematic fashion the relationship between
the institutions of the later Afghan states of northern India (in particular
the Lodis), and what came to be the usage under the Mughals. A second
avenue would be to look at the Central Asian roots of the Mughals, as well
as their relationship with other Timurid rulers, with the Uzbek Khanate,
and with the west Asian states in the sixteenth century. To do so would
require a serious consideration of the Uzbek chronicles (not only the
Abdullfh Nama. but Mushfiqi Bukharis Jahan Nima or Trikh-i Abdullah
Khan), and the diplomatic correspondence of the period.62
These are themes that have so far been little explored. To enter into
them would imply, on the one hand, a deeper examination of the Indian
context, and on the other hand, a wider approach to the larger Asian
context within which the Mughal state was formed. Further, once into the
more
regions,
61
Cf. an earlier critique in Frank Perlin, Concepts of Order and Comparison, with a
diversion on counter-ideologies and corporate institutions in late pre-colonial India, in
T.J. Byres and H. Mukhia, eds., Feudalism and non-European societies, London, 1985,
pp. 87-165; also his article Money-Use in late pre-colonial India and the international trade
in currency media, in J.F. Richards, ed., The Imperial Monetary System of Mughal India,
Delhi, 1987, pp. 232-373, which implicitly provides a thorough-going critique of the very idea
of an imperial monetary system, as set out by Richards! I should stress once more that the
replacement of these system-oriented approaches with other essentialist constructs like fitna
(see note 2 supra
) is to trade King Log for King Stork.
62
For some glimpses of the possibilities in this direction, see Farooqi, Mughal-Ottoman
Relations, cited in note 31 supra, also Riazul Islam, ed., Documents on Indo-Persian relations,
passim.
321
late sixteenth century, the question of region and empire, set out by
Chetan Singh in his recent monograph on Punjab in the seventeenth
century, merits exploration. To what extent did Mughal conquest fundamentally affect the institutions and political culture of different regions in
the sub-continent? Did the notion of the region itself change as a result of
the process of incorporation into the empire? These questions can, however,
only be addressed if we see the Mughal empire not as a finished product in
1600 (or at the death of Akbar), but as a state that was still evolving, and
struggling to come to grips with a variety of local and regional institutional
regimes. At the same time, to approach these issues means far more than
producing parochial local histories, or paraphrasing the apocryphal
chronicles of particular zaminddr families. It means writing histories that
share neither the structural presuppositions of Bernier, nor a simplistic
vision of the Mughal Juggernaut, the medieval road-roller that reduced the
sub-continent into an institutional flatland.

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The Mughal state&mdash;Structure or

Reflections on recent western

&dquo;The empire of the Great Mogol comprehends several nations, over

those of the author alone.

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period, and a work of synthesis which takes

economic history of the

The received wisdom

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dominates these essays, it is a basic reliance on Persian source

chronology: The main focus is on the period from Akbar to

certain texts, of which the most favoured status is extended to the

Ain-i Akbari, of Abul Fazl, produced in the reign of Akbar. It is

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early period of Mughal rule (including both Baburs and

4) Spendthrift elite: This

extractive character implied in turn massive

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6) Sterility of trade: This proposition appears to flow largely from (4).

7) Eighteenth-century decline: This proposition has, more than any other,

The formation of the

Having set out, at some length, the received wisdom on a variety of

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the lead of Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui and more recently

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Such an argument, which is accepted in substance (with some minor

Khanate to a far more centralised and autocratic structure. This he did

see his The Nobility under Akbar and the

administration, 2nd edition, Allahabad, 1959.

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might also fruitfully examine the extent to which the succession

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less of the burden of historical

where Streusands interests lie. Rather, having

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Concerning the Gunpowder Empires question, Streusands conclusions

Burton Stein, Peasant State and

in Medieval South India, Delhi, 1980.

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then, Streusand appears to depart from it in certain respects. The extent of

Islam and the Millenium

It would appear on reflection, however, that even in his analysis of ideology

Athar Ali, Towards

Agrarian System, pp. 200-201,

interpretation of the Mughal empire, p. 41;also Habib,

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justice, rectitude, strenuous labour, proper conduct, profound thoughtThanks be to

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Vol. V, pp. 150-76.

History of the Muslims

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dimension: as a gambit in Akbars jockeying for status vis-d-vis the

On Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, see Yohanan Friedmann, Shay

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of sulh-i kull (Absolute Peace) as a principle has attracted much

The patrimonial-bureaucratic state

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than one occasion by other recent writers that Berniers writings

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the patrimonial-bureaucratic state proves something of a red herring as

The Mughal state—Structure or